The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has accredited 114 media organisations to cover the upcoming Edo State gubernatorial election.
The commission announced on Monday that after a verification process, 114 newspaper, radio, television, and online media organisations, including NewsNGR, successfully uploaded the details of 721 personnel who will be deployed as reporters, cameramen, engineers for live broadcasts, and support staff.
This accreditation follows INEC’s earlier call to media organisations interested in covering the election to submit their applications and upload the personal details of their personnel ahead of the September 5, 2024 deadline.
INEC National Commissioner and Chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee, Sam Olumekun, stated that the full list of accredited media organizations, including the number of personnel to be deployed, had been uploaded to the commission’s website and social media platforms for public information.
Olumekun further reassured all accredited media organizations, observers, and political party agents that their accreditation tags will be ready before the election.
He also appealed to the accredited groups to abide by their codes of professional ethics, the law, and INEC’s regulations and guidelines in their reportage and observation of the electoral processes.
“While assuring all accredited groups of unimpeded lawful access to voting and collation locations, we appeal to media organisations and observers to abide by their codes of professional ethics, the law and the Commission’s regulations and guidelines in their reportage and observation of processes and procedures before, during and after the election,” said Olumekun.
This comes after INEC’s earlier rejection of all political parties’ nominations for polling and collation agents for the Edo gubernatorial election, citing widespread non-compliance with digital submission requirements.
The electoral umpire had stated that there would be “no going back to the manual process” for agent nominations.
INEC also announced plans to conduct a mock accreditation exercise on Tuesday, September 10th, 2024, to test the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal before their deployment for the Edo gubernatorial election.